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August 30 2010 [The other day, here in Idaho, we had record heat. And the next day, Fall began to arrive. Things can change and do.] My post yesterday, "The ever harsher Winds -- but the Sun again?" so far hasn't drawn much comment. On RBB, Cornet deemed the American Left "very dead" to which I responded, "I think the potential Left in this country is very large indeed." Ken responded with "If you add up the members of trade unions, left/liberal political action and lobbying groups and the various other constituencies that are generally taken as making up the contemporary "Left," it adds up to millions of people, and a pretty good chunk of the electorate in the United States. The question is, how do we make it a more powerful, more effective Left." While I don't disagree with Ken's final statement as it stands alone, I don't think most of that which he lists is Left at this point. To me, that's part of the "potential Left" -- no more and no less. As I see it, and I think History bears this out, "Left" connotes a belief that, at some points via linear trail and at others through "zig zag" or switch-back trails, the Left is committed to the public ownership of the means of production and distribution -- with production, not for profit, but for the common good. To be blunt about it, simply belonging to a union or seeking reform as an end in itself, is not Left. But again, there is a potential -- a powerful one -- which I am convinced will be activated. And I do think the active Left in this country is considerably larger -- though there are still not enough of us by any stretch -- than simply the membership sum of the existent "radical organizations." After all, there's been -- from the WTO protests more than a decade ago through the election of Obama, a great deal of activism, some of it genuinely Left in its thinking. In 1957, [and I've mentioned this before], I sent a couple of articles of mine to Bert Cochran and his fine American Socialist magazine. One -- which many on these lists have now seen -- involved the predatory activities of the oil and uranium mining corporations on the Navajo reservation, activities then enhanced by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. The other piece of mine predicted wide spread student and related activism in this country in the relatively near future. Bert Cochran was happy to run the Navajo piece and did -- but he gently turned down the other one as unrealistic. At that point, 1957, the active Left in this country, following years of witch-hunting, was minimal. In my home state of Arizona, a number of us, mostly students, were doing a number of activist things. Some of us were in touch -- and this was, of course, long before computer technology -- with kindred spirits around the country. The '60s loomed and the '60s came -- and to some extent, continued through the years. At that point, a big piece was the still slowly developing civil rights movement, especially in Dixie -- soon to expand and move dramatically and, in addition to its own cause, sparking a number of substantive issues and battles, each significant in its own right. At this point, our mounting complex of challenges -- e.g., economic, perennial war, environmental, and certainly civil rights and civil liberties, all of them compelling to an extreme, are coming at us from the very Four Directions. I think those challenges will be constructively met -- and a growing number of people are presently engaged in that good work. And there will be more of us, and then many more. And, for sure, a genuine and healthy American Left -- committed to systemic change -- will Feather Out, And it will do so most effectively. As an older friend and veteran of much good struggle once told me, via then in-fashion telegram, "Success will be ours in the long run." Solidarity, Hunter [Hunter Bear] HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ and Ohkwari' Our Hunterbear website is now more than ten years old. It contains a vast amount of social justice material -- including much on techniques of grassroots activist organizing. Check out http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm See: Hunter Bear's Full and Detailed Movement Life Interview: http://hunterbear.org/HUNTER%20BEAR%20INTERVIEW%20CRMV.htm And See Extensive Essay on Hunter Gray: Native Roots/Identity, Social Thought and Social Justice: [From THE JOURNAL OF INDIGENOUS THOUGHT] http://hunterbear.org/Red%20essay%20on%20Hunter%20Gray.htm See: The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father] and its accompanying essay on Minority Adoptions and Native Land and Resources: http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
